“I say... I don’t know. That some spirits are bound to the places they loved, and I don’t fully understand why some linger and others move on. It is not even entirely a lie.”
“That is a lie, Elizabeth.”
“Yes. It is the best I have.”
Kitty had not argued further. She had not agreed, exactly, but she had stopped objecting, which amounted to the same thing. What she had said, this morning, looking almost as strained as Elizabeth felt, was: “Just go. Before you lose your nerve again.”
Elizabeth had not lost her nerve. She had simply, on all the previous occasions when she might have spoken, found a reason not to.
But Jane was coming, and Jane would ask whether Elizabeth had told her husband, and Elizabeth could not face that conversation without an honest answer.
She found him in his study, as she had expected to at this hour. He was reading correspondence, but he set it aside when she came in, because he always did, and the gladness in his face made what she was about to do both easier and more terrible.
“I need to tell you something,” she said.
Darcy looked at her. His expression did not change, but his gaze sharpened.
“Will you not sit down?” he said, his tone gentle. As though perhaps he thought she might flee if he sounded formal, or stern.
She sat. She folded her hands in her lap and unfolded them again. “There is something about me that I should have told you before we married. Something I have carried my whole life, that my family knows, and I have been trying to find the right moment to tell you, and there is no right moment, so I am choosing this one.”
Darcy had gone a little stiff, his posture rigid, almost as though awaiting a blow. She could see him preparing for something, though she could not tell what he expected. An unhappiness. Some grief she had been hiding.
He was not wrong, exactly.
“Darcy, I...”
A knock at the study door cut her off before she could begin to say it. The knock was sharp, urgent. Darcy shot Elizabeth an apologetic look before rising and going to the door.
Elizabeth twisted her hands together, made herself breathe slowly.Whoever it is will go away in a moment,she thought,and then I will say it.
But the voice at the door was Mrs Reynolds, who would never interrupt them lightly, and she sounded carefully composed but not quite calm as she said, “I beg your pardon, sir, but a carriagehas just been sighted on the drive. It is Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s carriage.”
The silence lasted perhaps two seconds. It felt considerably longer.
“She has not written,” Darcy said.
“No, sir.”
Darcy turned from the door and looked at Elizabeth. Elizabeth looked at Darcy. The truth she had spent days gathering the courage to deliver sat between them, stranded.
“We will continue this conversation,” Darcy said. It was not a question.
“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “We will.”
But the moment had passed. They both knew it. Elizabeth stood, smoothed her dress, went to meet the carriage with her husband beside her and the words still locked behind her teeth.
Lady Catherine descended from her carriage as though conferring a favour upon the ground.
She was dressed in black bombazine, worn less for mourning than for authority, and she surveyed Pemberley’s front entrance in a single sweeping glance and an expression that clearly indicated she found the sight before her entirely inadequate. Behind her, Anne de Bourgh was helped down by her companion, pale and thin and blinking in the October sun like a creature emerging from long captivity. Which, in some respects,Elizabeth supposed, she was. She had truly never expected to see Anne de Bourgh at Pemberley, so far from the safety of Rosings.
“Fitzwilliam,” Lady Catherine said. “I have come.”
“So I see,” Darcy said. His voice was perfectly civil and perfectly cold, and Elizabeth could hear the effort required to be both.
“I am not staying long. A week, perhaps two. I wish to see how the house is being kept. Anne needs the air; she has been unwell, and Mrs Jenkinson insists upon the country. I have matters to discuss with my brother Lord Matlock. And I wish,” she turned her gaze upon Elizabeth, and the force of it was considerable, “to see how you are getting on, Mrs Darcy.”
“Very well, I thank you,” Elizabeth said, and smiled, because the best defence against Lady Catherine had always been courtesy delivered with an impeccable straight face.
